All skills will naturally decline over time, especially over long periods of time without use. The amount of skill loss is based on percentages with extremely low caps, so even with more than 100 ranks in a skill, the most you will lose in an hour is around 15% and you will only suffer skill depreciation while you are actually playing (not if you are logged out).

We've done this for a number of reasons. First of all, it's quite unrealistic for characters to master every skill and art in the game. It just doesn't make sense unless you are very dedicated to your skill practice, perfecting your skills with every breath you breathe. Most will practice the skills most important to them. Sorry, no one can be a master of everything without extreme dedication and discipline.

Secondly, it models the real life concept that the longer you stop participating in an activity or skill, the more you forget and become rusty on it. Unless you logged in for nearly a full real-life year without practicing a skill, it's nearly impossible to completely forget how to use a skill. The amount of loss is pretty low, only getting steep with higher ranks.

Hopefully, you will receive these changes well and understand that they aren't as severe as they seem. Generally, I don't post specifics, but I will in this case because the information can't really be abused and there's plenty of room to discuss it in a completely natural, role-playing way in-game.

Depending on how many ranks you have in a skill and when you hit the maximum caps, here is how much skill loss you should expect due to depreciation:

10 ranks: less than 1% per hour
25 ranks: less than 4% per hour
50 ranks: less than 8% per hour
100+ ranks: 15% per hour (maximum loss)

Remember, you will only lose skill ranks while you are connected, not if you are offline for a week, etc. So if you're playing for 8 hours straight (about 3 in-game days, if I recall -- estimating), you will lose 1 rank and 20% of those 200 ranks in Dagger if you don't practice it on something.

Mind telling us why? Perhaps a good reason why it wouldn't benefit Eaxia's growth and make character development more valuable? Any particular reason why we should turn this off other than it makes the game more of a challenge rather than collecting skills and maxing out your character?

imagine you are a pickpocket a thief a lumberjack ect and you get incarcerated inprisoned otherwise occupied for several years. You still retain the knowledge of how you did what you did. In real life people keep thier knowledge and add to it. Say you have a real life accumulation of 100 pick pockets skills and you get busted and locked away for 5 years often times you can devise better ways of doing what you got busted for while in prison and be better when you come out. Say you are a lumberjack and you have an equivilant of 100 in axe and you break your leg and are down for 6 weeks when you get back to the job you wont have lost anything in knowledge you will be slightly worse off physically due to not using your skills for awhile but overall you still know exactly what you knew before you had to take a break. these are estimates since in real life there is no skill system you either know how to or dont. I think to be realistic people dont lose knowledge of how to use skills or lose the knowledge of how to use a gun or weapon skill ect. the only things that change are if over a very long time like say a matter of years they change physically a process of getting older that they lose the physical ability to do stuff as well. There are exceptional people that never lose thier strength and energy of youth but these are unfortunatly far and between. It just doesnt make any sense to lose a skill that is knowledge based when people naturally get smarter and learn even when not using a skill. Most people that can do something very well actually learn albeit at a slower rate when they are not doing something and often times will come up with a new way of doing something when they are not doing it that will improve the effectiveness of a skill. Basically it goes against what is normal in people to take away skill when they would normally at least in the time you are mentioning gain in the skill. Granted if you dont use a skill in 6 months or a year you might forget it but it quickly comes back often times with one use what you forgot. my 1.00 sorry i didnt have change for the 2 cents this time around

Maybe if i could walk away from hunting and really see where i learned something i would feel diffrent but thats not the case so no i dont like this at all and do we gotta hunt up with what our skills learn at to not lose them? and what if we go kill something does that make us good on combat for a while? or is it a constant working of the skill that stops it from being lost?

Well, I guess I'll put my two cent in too.
I sorta don't find it realistic, in that, I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't forget how to do something in a matter of days or even weeks. It takes me like several months even years to forget how ta do something. And if I do forget, if I go to do that thing again it takes me like no time ta be right back where I was before I forgot.
Also...
I do play for long hours at a time and in 8 hours if I don't practice one skill, because I dunno I'm hunting or playing castles or RPing being goofy or something then I lose like a rank or something. If 8 hours IRL = 3 days IG and that's how much I lose then that would make me pretty forgetful I think...

someone just pointed out another way of viewing it i didnt see. Part of the game is to roleplay and part of that is to interact with players besides can you pop this box i need healed and ect. castles and hopefully more will be to let people enjoy just hanging out online in game with friends and people are going to feel that they are being penalized if they have to hunt and dont really have the time to sit and visit with friends thanks

so are we just supposed to drop roleplaying and interacting all together?
if not we will lose all of our skill. and we don't get enough roleplaying as it is. i don't like the idea at all but what's it matter what i think

Last edited by SHRTY on May 10, 2004 (1:18 am), edited 1 time in total.

so are we just supposed to drop roleplaying and interacting all together?
if not we will lose all of our skill. and we don't get enough roleplaying as it is. i don't like the idea at all but what's it matter what i think

heres the messed up part i went and got a small bleeder so i could stay fresh in healing and was still losen the skill so from what i can draw ima haft to walk around with no torso just to keep my healing even and steal hunt sneak do boxes while haven no torso just to keep myself even that is so not cool i dont care what reasons for what is what on this system i dont like it the way it is now. i aint totaly against the idea really close to being not for it. but with some tweaking i guess MAYBE it wont be as bad

nah no i just dont like this system think of people that cant really learn from hunting and have capped skills they gotta just endlessly hunt over and over just to keep combat skills even then find time in the middle to do other things to keep those other important skills even. i am sorry if this is to soon and i really do like eaxia the players and the staff but i aint gonna stay around to hunt and not learn anything really just to break even again and again and again. so we are just gonna haft to see what comes of this and i doubt i am the only one thats thinking about just quitting or going to a freebie account and just logging in a commner for 20 hours a week less my big character is needed and i dont even see myself doing that. out of all the things that coulda been fixed or added i think this one is the biggest mistake there has ever been. i mean if i stop to help a new person i am losen skill if i wana play castles i lose skill if i gotta go drag someone i lose skills if i gotta help a newbie hunt i lose skills if i wana stand around and RP i lose skills if i wana do anything besdies work skills i lose them. Exxy this just isnt cool man and i really love your game and have been telling people i met that eaxia is the shiznit and they come play and have a good time til tonight now no one is haven a good time. its really depressing to haft to go do things i dont level off of to break even. if there was a new creature for me to hunt so i could gain exp then it would be a little diffrent but then again i would still haft to walk around with a missing torso to keep my heal up. and now ima haft to start sneaking around and stealing more from people. and we all know how that goes when i steal from people. just isnt right man and i hope you dont take this post wrong i aint yelling at you dude just saying i am dissapointed with your idea here ive come to expect better from you and great staff. its just a sad sad day please fix this cause i dont wana haft to leave and go to another game just so i can have the same fun i was haven here. I really dont wana leave but i am facen leave or lose skills that i want and need. please exxy do someting about this

i dont like the idea, i logged on unloaded 25 boxes and lost half a point, went to jungs and pulled punchies back up 281.4, went to stone giants and while fighting with my punchies i have lost over a quarter of a point, that means everytime i log on i have to go fight grey or mottled jungs to keep up all my defences, punchies, dual weapon style, i have recently started using falchion and shield beyond stones. does that mean when i get longsword and greatsword up to that level that evertime i log on i have to zoom around with frag to keep up mag devices, appraise all my gear, bleed and tend, use my greatsword with shield for those 2 skills then go to longsword, then to falchion, then to punchies in mottleds and greys to keep them up as well as dual weapon tactics, heavy armor, outnumbered defences, parry, dodge. all the while bouncing around to all the appriopriate areas for each skill. and while i am traing one all the others are dropping. when do i get to learn something new or socialize. so much for castes eh? i dont like it

also i am at 269 with dual weapon tactics, it adds .01 to the skill for every hit or every other hit, that means it takes between 100 and 150 dual hits to raise just 1 point. i can be in stone giants working on a new weapon and blocking and watch points drop of the skill. if i spend a night there it could take days to get back what i lost in one night.

The quality of the game has swiftly been decreased... I can not act like a fool anymore. I can not learn to play Castles. I will not be able to enjoy alone time with a lady. I can not be lazy. The skill depreciation will make me too paranoid. I'm lazy, I love the ladies, I am a fool and I love interacting with the other players and making them laugh, and I often get bored so I want to learn to play castles. I love Eaxia and i dont want to see everybody leave.

Well, my first reaction was, It's not so bad. I'll find a way to keep all my skills working. Then I panicked! I go days when all I do is hunt. And since I'm learning daggers and dual weapons right now, I haven't been using my sword, shield or longbow. For that matter while I'm hunting I'm not picking pockets. I'm not doing alot of appraising either. Not making potions or cutting gems. I haven't had a bleeder in a while either, so that means no tending. I'm not out foraging or trying to use the dang cauldron. Which if it's not working, how do I keep that skill going? By the time I work a little of everything, I'll still be loosing.

I'm not writing this in anger as one post suggested people were doing. I thought about what I'd write and read every other post first. But whether I write in anger, perplextion, anxiety, etc., it doesn't change the fact that this is just plain wrong. We've suffered loosing our skills, not once but twice. We've gone along with changes that some of us didn't find neccessary or very fun. Most of us have stuck it out. But this goes too far.

This is not a threat, but common sense. Many will decide this just isn't worth it any more. It'll be hard going to another game. We've made friends here that we've come to feel strongly for and even rivalries add spice to it all and we'll miss them too. I'm with Goharo and Claudvon. I'll hope it'll go away or at least be more realistic. And I'll be ready to leave if it stays the same.

MANIACWILL wrote:imagine you are a pickpocket a thief a lumberjack ect and you get incarcerated inprisoned otherwise occupied for several years. You still retain the knowledge of how you did what you did. In real life people keep thier knowledge and add to it. Say you have a real life accumulation of 100 pick pockets skills and you get busted and locked away for 5 years often times you can devise better ways of doing what you got busted for while in prison and be better when you come out. Say you are a lumberjack and you have an equivilant of 100 in axe and you break your leg and are down for 6 weeks when you get back to the job you wont have lost anything in knowledge you will be slightly worse off physically due to not using your skills for awhile but overall you still know exactly what you knew before you had to take a break. these are estimates since in real life there is no skill system you either know how to or dont. I think to be realistic people dont lose knowledge of how to use skills or lose the knowledge of how to use a gun or weapon skill ect. the only things that change are if over a very long time like say a matter of years they change physically a process of getting older that they lose the physical ability to do stuff as well. There are exceptional people that never lose thier strength and energy of youth but these are unfortunatly far and between. It just doesnt make any sense to lose a skill that is knowledge based when people naturally get smarter and learn even when not using a skill. Most people that can do something very well actually learn albeit at a slower rate when they are not doing something and often times will come up with a new way of doing something when they are not doing it that will improve the effectiveness of a skill. Basically it goes against what is normal in people to take away skill when they would normally at least in the time you are mentioning gain in the skill. Granted if you dont use a skill in 6 months or a year you might forget it but it quickly comes back often times with one use what you forgot. my 1.00 sorry i didnt have change for the 2 cents this time around

This is very often true -- however for those who are incredibly dedicated to a single trade or a small set of closely-related skills. Not a wide-range of skills that everyone in the world knows how to do with complete perfection.

If you guys need someone to forage, or carve, or create potions, etc. do any of you seek someone who's really good at it? No. All of you are pretty good at it -- and why should that make sense that everyone can master every skill? No, you stick to what you do best and you keep your skills razor-sharp by practicing them as often as possible.

Goharo wrote:Maybe if i could walk away from hunting and really see where i learned something i would feel diffrent but thats not the case so no i dont like this at all and do we gotta hunt up with what our skills learn at to not lose them? and what if we go kill something does that make us good on combat for a while? or is it a constant working of the skill that stops it from being lost?

Hunting something at your level gives you anywhere from 200 - 1,000 skill XP every time you land a succesful blow. Less than that if you're a within a few ranks to your cap. If you have, for example, 150 ranks in a weapon and are fighting something of average difficulty for your skills, you should gain at least 1,000 total skill XP per kill. After a few kills, you should easily be able to accumulate 5,000 to 7,500 skill XP within a few minutes compared to your loss of 1,500 XP in a full hour should make it plenty easy to stay focused and dedicated to your skills without loss.

I am not unwilling to lower the rates or slow down the rates, however... if it becomes too much of a challenge to keep skills raising in general.

QUEENAMANDALA wrote:Well, I guess I'll put my two cent in too. I sorta don't find it realistic, in that, I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't forget how to do something in a matter of days or even weeks. It takes me like several months even years to forget how ta do something. And if I do forget, if I go to do that thing again it takes me like no time ta be right back where I was before I forgot.Also...I do play for long hours at a time and in 8 hours if I don't practice one skill, because I dunno I'm hunting or playing castles or RPing being goofy or something then I lose like a rank or something. If 8 hours IRL = 3 days IG and that's how much I lose then that would make me pretty forgetful I think...

Anyhoo, there's me two cents, hope they was helpful 8-)

You're right -- you won't decline significantly, but you will decline some. If you figure the average ability in any given skill is about 30 or 40 ranks, then it would take you over 18 real hours (almost a week in-game) to start to lose your edge (you will have lost a full rank without ANY practice). But like I said, if the rate is too severe, I don't have any problems adjusting and tweaking it so that the game isn't too challenging.

Also, playing Castles will soon be awarding trade skill experience in the Playing Castles skill. It won't make your games any better and it won't give you class-related experience, but it will be factored into professions and should be something to be proud of, just like any other skill.

MANIACWILL wrote:someone just pointed out another way of viewing it i didnt see. Part of the game is to roleplay and part of that is to interact with players besides can you pop this box i need healed and ect. castles and hopefully more will be to let people enjoy just hanging out online in game with friends and people are going to feel that they are being penalized if they have to hunt and dont really have the time to sit and visit with friends thanks

I understand that this change freaks out a lot of you who haven't played with it yet and I'm sure you think it's far worse than it is. The skill loss is very marginal (or intended to be so -- if you experience worse than you think it is, please feel free to tell me) and only those who don't practice their skills for very extended periods of time will actually see rank loss. As absurdly silly as it is to raise skills, anyone who does let their skill drop some should easily be able to spend some time getting back "their edge" before heading back to several hours of role-playing, goofing off, and indulging in other in-game recreational activities.

Goharo wrote:heres the messed up part i went and got a small bleeder so i could stay fresh in healing and was still losen the skill so from what i can draw ima haft to walk around with no torso just to keep my healing even and steal hunt sneak do boxes while haven no torso just to keep myself even that is so not cool i dont care what reasons for what is what on this system i dont like it the way it is now. i aint totaly against the idea really close to being not for it. but with some tweaking i guess MAYBE it wont be as bad

I've been considering giving characters their top 10 skills a break by slowing down this process by 6x where you would only suffer a maximum skill loss of 2.5% rank per hour for the top 10 skills (would take 40 real-life hours of not practicing the skill on a challenging task/creature for you to lose a full rank).

Goharo wrote:think of people that cant really learn from hunting and have capped skills they gotta just endlessly hunt over and over just to keep combat skills even then find time in the middle to do other things to keep those other important skills even.

Take a look at my last post -- I think it'll suit the needs of everyone here as far as the skills that really matter most. We're not trying to make the game so challenging or skills so time-consuming that it becomes a horrible burden, but we want to make skill development and maintenance extremely valuable. We don't like that anyone can master every single skill out there and yawn their way through years of non-practice.

Other games have skill caps and once you train them, you're done. You can't go back and learn 30 more ranks of Heal because you already learned 60 ranks of Wilderness Lore (different skill names, but we're talking about Ultima Online, for example).

BALTIMUS wrote:also i am at 269 with dual weapon tactics, it adds .01 to the skill for every hit or every other hit, that means it takes between 100 and 150 dual hits to raise just 1 point. i can be in stone giants working on a new weapon and blocking and watch points drop of the skill. if i spend a night there it could take days to get back what i lost in one night.

You're missing the fact that the more you lose, the easier it is to learn it back. You learn more skill XP when your skill isn't near its cap. Although with my recent posts about slowing down skill depreciation for your top 8 skills, this wouldn't hardly be a problem at all for anyone, unless you're trying to master several weapons -- then yes, you need to be more dedicated than the casual warrior.

Goharo wrote:i agree i just hope more people agree and leave so this hast to be fixed

Thankfully, Eaxia Online has staff who have ears and hearts. I know where a lot of you come from and I know that a lot of you are used to "if you don't fix it, I'll leave!" being the only way to get attention or to prove a point, but it's far from necessary here and I am completely open to suggestions and solutions. I haven't heard any, yet.

The idea behind with is being done isn't necessarily a bad one. I think how it is being initiated is difficult. My understanding is that you lose approximately 15% of skill, assuming you are a higher level, per hour, which translates to about a third of a day eaxia time. I do think this depreciation is very harsh.

In reality, no one forgets a skill they have learned heavily in that amount of time. My thoughts were to possibly start depreciation after a skill has not been used for a set amount of time. In life, people vacation for a week or two and they don't forget how do to what they did every day. They head back to the task easily. However, you can become rusty at a skill if you take months off. Therefore, I think skills that are used regularly should not be affected. However if you learned a small amount of a weapon because you tried it and never try it again, then the skill after it is idle for say 1 month, eaxia time, should start depreciating.

I also think that the current depreciation rate is unreasonable. The skill is learned much slower and it seems to me the rate of depreciation is too fast based on the rate of learning. So no matter what you do you're in a negative.

I also agree that there are times, I don't feel like hunting. I help people get pets, play castles, just talk, or help newer adventurers. In doing that, I'm being punished by having my earned skills taken away from the moment I start doing any of those activities.

Although skill depreciation makes sense, if it's put in practice there should be a limit on how much it goes down from depreciation. like a maximum of 10 percent. There has to be a limit to the amount of depreciation a person can get, otherwise, you'll have major turn off from people. One of my character have spent hours building armorsmithing, and is still below 10 ranks, and i'm sorry, loosing those ranks would be very depressing. Armorsmithing increment per minute could be smashed literally by the amount of depreciation one can get.
There is an interesting side effect to depreciation, it would allow someone to gain experience from skills that have been max out in the present system.
Saphyre